BUSH PANICS

His nomination of Roberts for Chief Justice seems like a strange gamble for me. Someone who has not yet been on the Court should now be leading it? I know there are precedents, but this strikes me as a way to buy time. I know the polls are showing limited damage to the president. But it is a given at times like this that people rally to their president. They haven’t. So Bush reaches for safety. Deeper down, the crisis is worse. We face a perilous few years. Bush has just given notice to al Qaeda and others that this country is utterly unprepared for a possible terrorist calamity; and the people of the country have at best luke-warm confidence in their commander-in-chief. I take no pleasure whatever in this scenario. We are both deepy divided and deeply demoralized about the effectiveness of American government. That’s not how you win a war.